


I Would Wait Forever

by amyanomaly



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 12:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2581865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyanomaly/pseuds/amyanomaly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their wrists read each other's names. It's as simple as that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Would Wait Forever

Franklin Tucker had moved into this neighborhood three weeks ago and he hadn’t met anyone. He’d seen his neighbors walking their dogs, but because of the crazy hours he worked he had never been able to speak to any of them. Someone had slipped a flyer for a community barbecue in his mailbox last week and now here he was, trying to fight off the exhaustion that came with working nights and sleeping during the day to socialize with his neighbors. He ran his fingers over his short-sleeved dress shirt and walked across the street and down a bit, to the house with the balloons out front. 

The gate on the side of the house was open and two kids ran through it, aiming plastic guns at each other. Franklin stepped out of the way, watching as the taller of the two fell over dramatically into the grass. 

“Hey! Come back here!” An older kid yelled, probably ten or twelve, and she ran after the two kids. “You’re supposed to stay in the backyard!”

Franklin entered the backyard and stopped in his tracks as he saw the amount of people milling around. A man looked up from the refreshments table and locked eyes with Franklin. He waved and grabbed another plastic cup, pouring soda into it.

Franklin gratefully took the red plastic cup his neighbor offered him. He looked at the brown liquid with ice and asked, “What exactly is this?”

“Oh, it’s Coke,” his neighbor said. “My name’s Jim. My wife, Lizzie, is over there with the giant husky dragging her towards the pool. We live in the white house with the red shutters.”

“I’m Franklin,” he told Jim. He took a sip from his soda. “I live in the house with the blue front door and overgrown lawn.”

“Yeah, you just moved in a few weeks ago, right?” Jim asked and turned away from Franklin to look at his wife. He waved her over. 

“Yeah,” Franklin told him. Lizzie pushed a strand of her dark hair back, panting almost as much as the dog as they both struggled to walk across the yard to where Franklin and Jim stood.

Lizzie smiled at Franklin and plucked the cup out of her husband’s hand, trading him the leash for the dog. “Hi, I’m Lizzie.”

Franklin smiled, shook her hand, and said, “I’m Franklin.”

Lizzie took a long drink and sighed as she looked down at where the husky was now curled up at Jim’s feet. She waved at someone coming into the backyard and Franklin caught the black ink on her brown wrist that read James K. Atkins. 

“Franklin just moved in recently,” Jim said, taking his cup back from Lizzie.

“Oh, really? How do you like it so far?” she asked.

“It’s a great neighborhood,” Franklin said. “I mean, this is the first house I’ve ever owned so everything seems really great.”

Lizzie laughed. “I remember when Jim and I first got together. We rented the crappiest house in the town, but it was cheap and it was ours... So is it just you?”

“Yep, just me. I’m thinking about getting a dog though,” Franklin said, adding the last bit to steer the conversation away from his social life. 

“Well, I hope your future dog listens better than Shadow does,” Lizzie commented, nudging the husky with her toe.

“He just doesn’t listen to you,” Jim pointed out, gesturing down at the dog who wasn’t pulling him towards the pool. Lizzie shrugged.

Franklin smiled. “Well, I’m going to go get something to eat.”

“Oh, make sure you get a burger. Oksana makes the best burgers,” Lizzie told him. She pointed to the blonde woman who was wearing an apron and holding a pair of barbecue tongs.

Franklin nodded and wandered over to the food table, picking up a plate and spooning macaroni salad and fruit onto it. 

“Don’t let Oksana see you skip the burgers,” a voice said from behind him. Franklin turned slightly and stared at the teenage girl. “Oksana is all about meat.”

“Okay?” Franklin said.

“My step-mom doesn’t think humans can survive being vegetarians,” the girl continued. She grabbed a plate and picked up pieces of fruit with her bare hands, dropping them on her paper plate. She placed a grape in her mouth then said, “Naturally, I’m a vegetarian.”

“As long as you get proper protein,” Franklin started. “Anyone can survive being a vegetarian.”

The girl shrugged. “Oksana doesn’t think so, but it’s fine. She’s great about everything else.”

“So this is your house?” Franklin asked. The girl nodded. They stepped away from the table when she had finished stacking her plate with everything that didn’t have meat in it. She took a crunching bite from a pickle and turned to look at the back of her house.

“That’s my room,” she said, and pointed up towards a window near the top of the house. There was a cat sitting in the windowsill and black curtains pulled back in the corners. 

“I’m Franklin,” he told her finally as they sat down next to each other in plastic chairs. Franklin wasn’t sure what the girl’s parents would think of him talking to a teenager, but it was a community barbecue. It’s not like he was trying to hit on the girl or something. Although, as he looked at her, she was quite pretty. She was petite, with curly blonde hair and dark brown eyes.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that.”

“What?” Franklin sputtered, trying not to spit soda all over her. She smiled at him and ran a hand through her hair. Her arm was tilted in just the right way to reveal the black ink on her wrist. His name was written on her skin, in swirling letters just like his signature. 

“Why shouldn’t I? Your wrist says my name,” he told her. 

She laughed. “That doesn’t mean you own me.”

Franklin smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Edith.”

Edith rolled her eyes. “Call me Eddie. And it’s nice to meet you too, Franklin O. Tucker.”

“Eddie!” Someone yelled from across the yard, back towards the gate. Eddie looked up and instantly grinned, lighting up her face. She stood up and placed her plate on the chair before running across her backyard and jumping into a tall, teenaged boy’s arms. The boy’s arms wrapped around her tightly and when they separated, his hands rested low on her back. 

Franklin sighed and stuffed a heaping spoonful of macaroni salad into his mouth. It’d figure Edith Leighton was a teenage girl with a boyfriend. 

 

He didn’t cross paths with Eddie the rest of the afternoon. She had ducked out with the boy a few minutes after he had arrived. Franklin spent his time awkwardly making conversation with his neighbors, trying to seem more like an adult than he really felt. 

Franklin excused himself around three o’clock in the afternoon, waving to Jim and Lizzie as he left the barbecue. Everyone he had spoken to was nice and friendly in that adult kind of way he had never really experienced before, living in the apartment complex with his friends from high school. He wasn’t sure he enjoyed it, but it was definitely a nice change from his neighbors ignoring his existence.

“Hey, wait up,” a female voice called. Franklin turned and there was Eddie, jogging towards him. He stopped and watched as she leaned over a bit, hands on her thighs, panting. Franklin didn’t look down her tank top. 

“What?” He asked. 

“Let’s go for coffee tomorrow,” Eddie told him. “You have a car?”

Franklin nodded.

“Then come get me at ten and we’ll go to the diner in town and get to know each other.”

“Make it eleven,” Franklin told her. “I won’t get home ‘til six am.”

“Sounds good,” Eddie said. “You know where I live.”

Franklin nodded. “Wait, tomorrow’s a school day.”

She shrugged. “Who cares? I just met my soul mate.”

 

They stared at each other from opposite sides of the booth. Eddie ripped open two packets of sugar at once, never breaking eye contact, and poured them into her mug of coffee. Franklin fiddled with the wrapper from his straw, crunching it into a ball before flattening it out again. 

Neither knew what to say to each other.

Eddie brought the mug to her lips and slurped the hot coffee, watching Franklin with brown eyes over the rim. 

“So how old are you?” Franklin asked finally. It had been on the tip of his tongue the moment he saw his name written on her skin.

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

Franklin paused. “Twenty-eight.”

“You have a real job and a house or something?” He nodded. “Can I see it?”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” 

It was the middle of the day on a Monday. She was supposed to be in school. Eddie shrugged. “Not really. Take me to your house.”

“I... I shouldn’t. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at your grown up job?”

“I work nights,” Franklin told her. “Won’t your parents worry about you?”

“Have you seen what I’m wearing? Do you think they care very much?” Eddie asked, looking down at herself. 

He frowned. “I thought you liked your step-mom.”

Eddie shrugged. “Doesn’t mean she tries to act like my mom. She’s more of my friend, really. And my dad doesn’t really care if I skip school sometimes. I always make up the work and get good grades, so who cares really?”

Franklin linked his hands together, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “I shouldn’t bring you to my house.”

Eddie leaned onto the table, bringing her face closer to Franklin’s. “I’m your goddamn soul mate. I think you can show me your house without the police breaking down the door and telling you I’m underage.”

 

Eddie started coming to his house almost every afternoon, as soon as she got off the school bus. She knocked on Franklin’s front door and leaned against the doorframe, waiting for Franklin to pull himself out of bed. 

“Hey,” she said as the door opened. Franklin rubbed at his eyes, squinting into the sunlight to look at her. 

“You’re lucky I like you,” Franklin muttered. He stepped back and let Eddie through the door, watching as she kicked off her boots and dropped her backpack on the floor. She padded through the hall in little pink socks to the kitchen, opening a cabinet and pulling out a granola bar. Franklin sat at the table, pushing the chair across from him out for her to sit on. 

Eddie ignored the chair and pulled herself up onto the bare counter, unwrapping the granola bar. She took a bite and looked at Franklin. “Good morning, Franklin.”

Franklin smiled. “Good afternoon, Eddie.”

“My dad doesn’t let me sit on the counter at home,” she told him.

“Probably because he’s a civilized human being.”

She rolled her eyes. “So how was work last night?”

Franklin shrugged. “Fine.”

“You work tonight?”

He shook his head. “I finally have a Friday night off.”

“Let’s do something.” She jumped down from the counter. “My friend’s brother is throwing a party tonight. He’s a junior in college, so it won’t just be a bunch of teenagers.”

“You want me to go with you?” Franklin asked. They hadn’t talked about it, but Franklin knew she was dating the boy from the barbecue.

“Yeah, my friends want to meet you.”

Franklin shrugged. “Alright, I’ll go.”

Eddie smiled. “Thanks, Franklin. Hey, do you only go by Franklin?”

He watched her through the doorway of the kitchen as she grabbed her backpack from the foyer. She pulled her phone out of a pocket on the side and started texting someone as she walked back into the kitchen, backpack on her shoulder. 

“Some people call me Tucker and no one’s called me Frankie since I was like ten,” he told her.

Eddie looked up from her phone. “Tucker. I like that. It suits you better than Franklin.”

He shrugged. “Why do you go by Eddie instead of Edie?”

“I like Eddie better,” she said. She dropped her backpack on the kitchen table and pulled out a textbook. “Now if you don’t mind, I have some homework to do.”

Franklin stood, leaving her alone in the kitchen. He lay down on the couch in the living room, facing the doorway so he could see Eddie sitting at the table, hunched over with the textbook in her lap. 

 

Franklin woke to the sound of pots and pans being shuffled around. He pulled himself up off the couch and wandered into the kitchen. “What’re you doing?”

Eddie was bent over, with two large pots sitting next to her. “Don’t you have any normal pots in here?”

“What’re you trying to make?”

“Mac and cheese,” Eddie told him. She leaned back on her haunches and looked up at him. “Seriously, all of these are either seriously huge or really tiny.”

Franklin smiled and held up the pot that was in the drying rack on the counter. “Will this work?”

Eddie groaned. She stuffed the pots back into the cabinet, shoving the door shut as they fell over into each other. She plucked the pot out of Franklin’s hands and started to fill it with water.

“You don’t have to make dinner,” Franklin told her.

“It’s just macaroni and cheese. Go shower and get dressed, okay? You slept for a long time and we should get going soon.”

“Right, your friend’s brother’s party.”

Eddie glanced up at him as she placed the pot of water on the stove. “You regret saying you’d go?”

“No,” he said. She turned away, but Franklin could see the edge of a smile on her face.

 

Franklin parked his car two blocks down from the party and said, once he saw Eddie’s look of confusion, “I don’t want drunk college kids sitting on my car.”

“Seriously?” 

“It’s a legitimate concern.”

Eddie shook her head at him. Walking on the sidewalk towards the house, she bumped her elbow into his side and said, “Don’t try and act all cool or whatever. They’ll think you’re cool either way.”

“I wasn’t going to try and impress your friends.”

“Why not?” Eddie asked, sounding put off. 

“Because they’re your friends. I mean I want them to like me, but I’m not going to act like an idiot to get some teenage girls to think I’m cool. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’ve spent enough time trying to impress girls already.”

“What about me?” She asked.

Franklin looked over at her. “Do I need to put on some act to impress you?”

She stopped walking and looked at him, head cocked to the side. She bit her lip, drawing Franklin’s attention down to her pink mouth. “No, I think I like you enough already.”

“Good,” he said and tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

 

Franklin lost track of Eddie. She had a cup in her hand when she had disappeared to go talk to someone she had spotted across the room and as soon as she left, her best friend Kelsey smiled up at him. Kelsey was short, with a pink pixie cut and a nose ring. She was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, holding a beer in her hand. 

“So Eddie won’t tell me how old you are,” Kelsey said, leaning towards Franklin so he could hear her.

“Oh,” he answered. While he was immensely worried about his age, he hadn’t thought Eddie was.

“I’m guessing you’re over twenty-one, but younger than thirty,” Kelsey said.

Franklin nodded. “I’m twenty-eight.”

“That’s an eleven year difference,” she murmured.

“I’m very aware.”

Kelsey grabbed his arm. She turned his wrist upwards, so Eddie’s name was visible in the dim light. “If it wasn’t meant to be, her name wouldn’t be there.”

“Have fun tonight, Tucker,” she told him. “I know Eddie is.”

Kelsey pointed past Franklin. Through the door into the kitchen, Franklin could see Eddie sat on the counter, beer nearly spilling out of her cup. He turned to look back at Kelsey and she was already gone into the crowd, talking to someone else.

Franklin made his way towards Eddie and watched the guy talking to her. He was leaning close to her, hand braced on the counter like he wanted to rest it on her thigh instead.

“Franklin!” Eddie exclaimed the moment her eyes landed on him. She dropped her cup into the sink next to her and jumped off the counter. She stumbled slightly and gripped Franklin’s arms to steady herself. “Whoa. Head rush.”

“You okay?”

Eddie grinned. She kept her right arm on Franklin and turned back to the guy. “Hey Chris. This is Franklin. He’s my soul mate.”

Chris nodded at him. “Nice to meet you, dude. See you later, Eddie.”

“Bye, Chris,” she called after him. Eddie smiled up at Franklin. “Let’s go outside. It’s too hot in here.”

Eddie turned towards the backdoor that Franklin assumed led outside, still holding onto his forearm. She didn’t try to hold his hand.

The backdoor opened up onto a covered patio, with a small table and chairs. No one was outside yet, it was still early and Eddie immediately sat in one of the chairs. She took a deep breath. On the table was an ashtray filled with old cigarette butts. Eddie poked at one while Franklin sat down next to her. 

“You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she answered. “It’s just really hot in there. There’s too many people.”

“The fire marshal would be appalled,” Franklin joked. Eddie laughed quietly and fidgeted in her seat. “Are you okay with how much older than you I am?”

Eddie’s eyes snapped up to his. She stopped moving. “You’re my soul mate.”

Franklin nodded. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we have to be... romantically involved. There are platonic soul mates out there, you know.”

“I don’t want to be platonic,” she said, dropping her eyes to the ashtray. She reached out and grabbed Franklin’s hand after a moment and led it down to her waist.

Franklin gripped her hip, thumb pressing in between the hem of her shirt and the top of her shorts. Eddie rested her hands on his shoulders and leaned forward, pressing their lips together. It wasn’t a gentle kiss, Franklin thought. Eddie was in total control and there was nothing gentle about the way she pressed against him, teeth clacking once uncomfortably. Her hands tightened on his shoulders until Franklin was certain a bruise might start to form. 

Eddie pulled back as Franklin pushed the hem of her shirt up an inch, and she looked at him, and burst out laughing. 

“What?” Franklin asked, brows furrowing. 

“I just thought of a joke Kelsey told me earlier,” she told him. Tears started to gather at the corners of her eyes as she continued laughing. “Oh my god. It’s so funny.”

“Are you drunk?” Franklin asked. He hadn’t seen what or how much she had drank.

“Barely,” she assured him, patting him on the shoulder. “Can we kiss again? That was really nice.”

Franklin shook his head. “Not while you’re drunk or tipsy or whatever.”

“But Tucker,” she whined. “Please.”

“No.”

He moved to stand up just as a group of people came out onto the patio, grabbing the ashtray and immediately lighting cigarettes. Franklin took Eddie’s hand and led her back into the house. 

 

As they waited for Kelsey to make it into her house, Eddie tapped Franklin on the knee. She had had more to drink after they went back into the house, much to Franklin’s dismay, but he couldn’t blame the girl for wanting to have fun. He had done the same when he was in high school. 

“Are you mad at me?” She asked, eyes looking nearly black in the dim light from the dashboard. She blinked owlish at him, pouting. Behind her, Kelsey waved as she disappeared into her house. Franklin put the car in drive and circled around out of the neighborhood, back towards his and Eddie’s. 

“No, of course not,” Franklin tried to assure her. She had been susceptible to not believing a word anyone told her the whole night. 

“Are you sure because like, I normally don’t drink. Like I wanted to feel like I was older, but now I just feel like a little kid,” Eddie muttered.

“It’s alright,” Franklin told her. “Don’t worry so much. You’re only seventeen. You’re supposed to make mistakes.”

“Speaking of mistakes,” she said. “I might have forgotten that I told my dad I was staying at Kelsey’s tonight.”

“So?”

“If I come home, he’ll think there’s something wrong with me and Kelsey and that’ll be a whole thing.”

Franklin glanced over at her. “Are you asking if you can spend the night at my house?”

“Please? I’ll even like, sleep on the couch if that’s what you want.”

Franklin chuckled. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“Thanks, Tucker. Thanks so much,” she murmured and rested her head against the window. 

 

Franklin knew Eddie was going to prom with the boy from the barbecue. She had told Franklin his name was Marc and that no, they weren’t dating anymore. They were going as friends. He wasn’t worried at all. There was no reason to be. He and Eddie weren’t technically dating yet, although they did spend most of their free hours together, and he trusted Eddie decide for herself what she would and wouldn’t do with Marc after prom. 

They hadn’t planned to meet afterwards; Franklin would be home, not thinking about what Eddie was doing.

Franklin was asleep on the couch with movie credits playing when he heard someone knock on the door. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock on the wall. It was past midnight.

The knocking became louder. Franklin walked over to the door and looked through the peephole. On his front porch stood Eddie, still in her prom dress. He opened the door and pulled her inside.

“What’s wrong?”

“Marc left the party we went to afterwards without telling me and then there was this guy there who I’ve never seen before. I think he was some girl’s date from another school, but he was a jerk and tried to get me to go upstairs with him. And I told him ‘no I have a soul mate and also you’re gross’ but he just wouldn’t listen to me. So finally this other guy from my math class ended up punching the other guy in the face and then some girl started yelling at me because I was ruining everything or something. I don’t know. I was just really freaked out and I didn’t want to go home. So I got the guy who punched the creepy guy to drive me here.”

Franklin wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a hug and trying to comfort her. She rested her head against his shoulder and let out a deep breath. 

“Come on, go sit on the couch and I’ll get you something to drink and some clothes to change into,” Franklin told her. 

“Thanks, Franklin,” she murmured as she pulled out of his arms and sat on the couch. She leaned back and pulled off her heels, tossing them to the side. She propped her feet up on the table and wiggled her toes.

“Here.” Franklin dropped a pile of clothes on the couch next to her and set a glass of water on the coffee table. 

“Thanks,” she said. She grabbed the clothes and walked off to the bathroom. When she came back dressed in Franklin’s drawstring pajama pants and sweatshirt, Franklin could almost feel his heart swell at the image. She had never worn his clothes before, but seeing her in them now made him think about the future. 

What would it be like in five years time, when she was done with high school and in college? Would they be a couple then? Franklin thought about owning a dog with her, seeing them walking it together. He pictured Eddie on the couch, studying like she had done many times before, only this time there was a diamond ring on her finger. 

“What’re you thinking about?” Eddie asked. She grabbed the remote control and started flipping through the channels.

“The future,” he told her. “Our future.”

She hummed in acknowledgement and settled into the couch, leaning against him. Franklin wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.


End file.
